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Newark City Council Regular Meeting April 24, 2025

Tom Wong April 30, 2025 0

ed to let us know because we represent you. You are our community. We have a number of proclamations tonight. Let me get my notes. Shamsa, please join me. Nice to see you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is proclamation 19 43, American Muslim appreciation and awareness month. Whereas enriched by the unparalleled diversity of its residents, the city of Newark takes great pride in supporting individual religious freedoms and is strengthened by the contributions of its diverse populations, including those who practice Islam. And whereas over 90,000 Muslims live in Alameda County and and make immeasurable contributions to the cultural, political, economic fabric, and well-being of our communities. Whereas in 02/2024, the Council on American Islamic Relations received sick 8658 complaints nationwide, the highest number in its 30 years, reflecting a 7.4% increase from 2023. Whereas the city of Newark acknowledges the importance of peace and justice, understanding that Muslims deserve to live in peace and safety as to all residents of Newark, irrespective of your religion, irrespective of your culture, irrespective of your immigration status, if you're a resident of Newark, you should be treated in that manner. Whereas the Al Medina Education Center established in 02/2009 in the city of Newark provides spiritual, educational, and social services to the Bay Area and beyond offering regular prayers and programming for all ages while promoting a purposeful life rooted in Islamic values and a commitment to unity, growth, and service whereas it is appropriate to acknowledge and promote awareness of this myriad of invaluable contributions of American Muslims and extend to them the respect and camaraderie every American deserves. Now, therefore, I Michael Hamm, the mayor of Newark, on behalf of my colleagues on the city council proclaim the month of April as American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month in Newark and urge all Newark residents to take the opportunity to better understand, recognize, and appreciate the rich history and shared experiences of American Muslims. So it's with great honor I wanna present this, proclamation to you. Thank you. My pleasure. So good evening Mayor Mike and the city council. On behalf of Muslim residents of Newark, we sincerely thank you for the Arab American Heritage Month proclamation. This proclamation is a great example of fostering unity, inclusivity and appreciation for our diverse communities. We deeply appreciate your commitment to celebrating and honoring the rich cultural and religious traditions that make the city of Newark a welcoming home for all. Thank you again for your continued support and leadership in fostering an inclusive and harmonious community. I don't know about you folks, but when I read those proclamations when it comes to, unity and cooperation and things of that nature, it seems so simple. You know, at the end of the day, it seems so simple. I just don't understand why it becomes difficult. Next, I'd like to invite Dan to join me at the podium. Dan, you know I'm not gonna even try to pronounce your last name. I get it wrong every time. I know. Welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, this is proclamation 1941 to, recognizing Arbor Day. The first Arbor Day was established in 1872 to promote the reforestation of the Plains Of Nebraska. And by the year 1920, more than 45 states and territories observed Arbor Day, whereas Arbor Day will be observed in the city of Newark on 04/24/2025, whereas trees in our city increase property values, enhance the economic vitality of business areas, enhance the economic vitality of business areas, enhance the environment by providing habitat for animals, purify the air, and beautify our community, whereas Arbor Day promotes tree appreciation and conservation, tree planting, and tree care, whereas the city Of Newark has recognized the value of thousands of specimen trees within the city limits and has consistently supported the planting and maintenance of approximately 13,000 trees on public property. Now, therefore, I'm Michael Hanna, mayor of the City Of Newark on behalf of my council, declare April 24 as Arbor Day in Newark and urge all residents to support efforts to protect our trees and woodlands and to support our city urban forest program. Dan, I present this to you and, thank you for all your contributions to the city on Arbor Day. Thank you. My pleasure, my friend. I I just want to say we are planting trees next Saturday at Sportsfield Park off the Cherry Street parking lot. So if you want to come volunteer and get dirty and plant some tree, learn how to plant a tree properly, come on out. We start at 08:30 till noon. Beautiful. Hey, Dan. I know you are actively out there, you know, working in partnership with other volunteer organizations to plant trees in our city maybe next year. Let me know just how many trees we're planting this year because the number will surprise many. We are out there planting trees all the time. I'd like to invite my good friend Matthew Farrell, our chief building official, to join me. Hi Matthew. Ladies and gentlemen, we're issuing proclamation 1935, Building Safety Month. Whereas the City of Newark is committed to recognizing that our growth and strength depends on the safety and essential role of our homes, buildings, and infrastructure play both in everyday life and when disasters strike. Whereas our confidence in the resilience of buildings that make up our community is achieved through the implementation of modern building codes and the dedication of building safety and fire prevention officials, architects, engineers, builders, and others in the construction industry who work year round to ensure the safe construction of buildings. Whereas these modern building codes include safeguards to protect the public from hazards such as hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, and earthquakes. I might have put earthquakes first. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna digress for a moment. I was in San Jose back in '89 when we had the, earthquake and, working in government at that time, we must have received tens of thousands of calls after the earthquake from concerned citizens worried that their homes were either off their foundations, their brick chimneys had collapsed, there was a lot of concern out in the community. And even in San Jose where we probably had 40 or 50 building inspectors, there was no way that they were gonna be able to respond to all those calls in a timely manner. So we basically utilized a lot of city staff who were quickly trained on recognizing immediate health and safety issues to really go out and calm the nerves of residents to assure them that their home was safe and it was not going to fall down. But you can imagine in an earthquake, which I would put first, this city is going to receive lots of calls from concerned residents and we need as a community to be able to respond in a timely manner. Whereas Building Safety Month is sponsored by the International Code Council to remind the public about the critical role of our community's local code officials and assure us on safe, sustainable, and affordable buildings that are essential to our property, whereas game on, that's the theme, game on. The draft is today, too. Game on. The theme for Building Safety Month 20 25 encourages people to get involved in all aspects of building safety. Now, therefore, I, Michael Hammond, mayor of the city of Newark, on behalf of my council, declare May 2025 as Building Safety Month in Newark and urge all Newark residents to consider the commitment to improve building safety, resilience, and economic investment at home and in the community and to acknowledge the essential service provided to all of us by local and state building departments, fire prevention bureaus and federal agencies in protecting lives and property. It was only a few years ago, folks, we saw what happened at the Ghost Ship Fire situation up in Oakland where a lot of people lost lives on a condition that the government knew about, but in my estimation failed to respond. That doesn't happen in Newark. If we come across an emergency or an immediate situation, we're going to take whatever steps necessary, not because we want to be hard on residents. We just want to make sure people are living in safe homes, and that's really the commitment of our building department and our city. So it's with great pleasure that I present this to you, Matthew, and certainly feel free to say a few words, my friend. Oh, I'm okay. Thank you. Okay. You you say it so much better. Matthew just wants you to hold to watch the completion of the draft. I get it. The, next proclamation is where did I put my notes? Bridal Storms. You never really need to do RayStorms, are you? That's the father. Are you kidding me? You worked with him in San Jose? I I thought I no. No. I I didn't set Ryan up on that. I did not set Ryan up on that. It's not a common name. Ray Storms worked in the fire department. He was in fire protection services. And it wasn't uncommon for me to look to Ray to help me industrial building that was being used for a variety of uses not intended for industrial buildings, and your dad was outstanding. So please make sure you share that with him. I had a great pleasure working with him. Small world. He called me the, the night you first announced me getting hired here. Oh, did he? Yes. He's a good man. So this is National Water Safety Month, proclamation 1936, whereas individual and organized forms of recreation and the creative use of free time are vital to the happy lives of all of our residents. Whereas residents of the city of Newark recognize the vital role of swimming and aquatic related activities playing good physical and mental health and enhance the quality of life for all people, whereas the community understands the essential role that education regarding the topic of water safety plays in preventing drowning and recreational water related safety. Whereas the city of Newark is extremely proud of the George M. Silliman activity in a family aquatic center and its contributions to provide critical life skills, a safe and healthy place to recreate, a place to learn and grow, to swim, build self esteem, confidence and sense of self worth which contributes to the quality of life in our community. Now therefore, I'm Mark O'Hannon on behalf of my colleagues on the Newark City Council, declared National Water Safety Month for the month of May in Newark and urge all Newark residents to enjoy, recognize, and help promote the benefits derived from quality water safety programs and recreational services which provide something to value for everyone. So line, I present this to you, and, I don't know if you wanna say a few words, but you're certainly entitled to do so with that, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Hannan, City Council members and the City of Newark, for this proclamation. Drowning is still the leading cause of death in children from ages 1 through 4. The second leading cause for children from 4 to 14, and a top 4 cause for adults 54 and above. There is an average over 4000 unintentional drownings every year in this country, with over 8 times that non fatal drownings that require emergency medical care. Drowning can happen in as little as 20 seconds and is often silent. But it can be prevented. The city of Newark's recreation department is deeply committed to preventing drowning through a comprehensive approach that includes awareness, education, supervision, and training. We provide American Red Cross based swim lessons to thousands of students annually, ensuring foundational water safety skills from an early age. In 2024 alone, we've reached over 3,300 students. 2 40 3 participants were in our new Make a Splash campaign, which offered free swim lessons to increase access and equity in water safety education. Our staff are highly trained through regular in service sessions and a robust, robust certification program. In 2024, we certified 5 new lifeguard instructors, 37 new lifeguards, 9 junior lifeguards, 42 individuals in advanced public, or advanced first aid for public safety personnel. Additionally, we offer certifications in lifeguarding, water park lifeguarding, CPR, AD, first aid, emergency oxygen, water safety instruction, and Title 22 Advanced First Aid for public safety personnel. We also extend our outreach into the community. For example, we introduced the Whales Tales Water Safety Program in local classrooms, beginning with a kindergarten presentation and aiming to expand to all elementary schools. To further support safe recreation, we've provided over 4,300 life jacket rentals during our public swim hours, reinforcing our belief that safety should be accessible to all. As I close, I'd like to leave you with a few important reminders, simple yet powerful steps we can all take to promote water safety. Non swimmers should always wear a properly fitted life jacket and stay within arm's reach of a responsible adult in the water. Always actively supervise children by being in the water with them. Remember that 88 percent of drownings occur with a distracted adult in, the nearby vicinity, so always assign a designated water watcher. Never swim alone. Always swim with a buddy and in areas where lifeguards are present. Know and follow all safety rules and facility rules. Or, be aware of water depths before entering any body of water. By keeping these tips in mind, we can all do our part to ensure a safer and more enjoyable experience in and around the water. Through this, the City of Newark is building safer communities, 1 splash at a time. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the public comment section of our agenda. This is an opportunity for anyone, any member of the public to speak on an item that is not on the agenda this evening. Is Is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak to an item not on the agenda tonight? Yes, please come forward. If you don't mind state your name please. Sure. Hello, thank you for having me. Our pleasure. My name is Norbil Bizzi. I'm a Fremont Business Owner but Newark resident. I'd like to tell you about a intersection that I feel is a little dangerous. I live in the Bridgeway neighborhood and I constantly drive down, Central. As you're going down Central, when you're crossing Cherry, Cherry, the right turn from Cherry onto Central is kind of a yield and then there's this corner where there's a whole bunch of trees. The people who are driving down Central have to switch to the right lane after the intersection. Because it's a 1 lane intersection and then it becomes 2. So they are turning into the right lane as the person turning right is yielding. And the person turning right can't really see because there's a whole bunch of trees and bushes there. And I used to live in that area and I'd always hear in the middle of the night screeching and I knew it was that intersection. So I was hoping those trees could be cut down or something could be done about that. Possibly, you know, I don't know, somehow making it more safe. But that was my concern. It's been my concern for several years so I'm glad to be here today to make the comment. Well I'm glad you brought that to our attention. I know the city manager made note of the comment, the intersection that you're referring to and I know he'll ask staff to take a look at it. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Thank you. And I know the area that you're talking about. Yeah, no, thank you. You're welcome. Can you leave your contact information to the city? Sure. That way we can follow that back up with you. Thank you. Other public comments on items not on the agenda? Steve, please come on forward. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to take a little steam out of Steve's presentation. Steve is the new CEO for the city's Chamber of Commerce, so we want to welcome Steve to the city of Newark and know that good things are going to happen with the chamber under your leadership, so let's welcome Steve. Now put the timer on now, madam clerk. Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a, guides for speech making and it was the 3 B's. Be short, be sincere, and be seated. So keeping that in mind I get 1 out of 3. I will I had a little bit of a speech here, but I wanna say I'm so impressed with the city of Newark. It's the first time that I've been in your beautiful city hall chambers. I served as the mayor of San Leandro for 4 years. And during that time, I worked with mayor Smith. I knew your city manager, John Becker, as well when I was on the Alameda County Conference of Mayors. I also thereafter knew, Mayor Nagy. Newark has been blessed with fantastic leadership over a series, you know, of of decades. And now, you know, with mayor Hannan and with your leadership, the city is continuing to progress. And that's what makes me so excited about this role that I'm taking on now. I think Newark is truly 1 of the best run cities in Alameda County. And, you know, it's a city of resilience, innovation, and opportunity. And the chamber should reflect and amplify that spirit. It's the goal of the chamber board of directors, and it's my directive to revitalize the chamber into a dynamic hub that not only supports our local businesses, but also actively fosters civic engagement and helps shape Newark's economic future. So I look forward to working with all of you, getting to know all of you, reaching out to you, you know, getting your input as to what you think the chamber should be doing, what did the chamber do well in the past, where could it have improved, and where do you wanna see us go for the future. So thank you so much for your time. Welcome Steve. Any other public comment on items that are not on the agenda this evening? Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to move to the consent calendar. Now, I'm going to go ahead and pull D3 from the consent calendar because we have a couple council members that will need to recuse themselves, so that leaves us with items D1 and D2. City Manager, would you like to pull either D1 or D2? Not this evening, your honor. Colleagues, D1, D2 to be pulled? I'd like to pull D2 just to correct the typo. Great, thank you for that, council member. Any other item that be pulled? Okay, why don't we go ahead and take the correction on D2 before we vote....

Livermore Council Meeting February 10, 2025

Tom Wong April 30, 2025 0

Good evening and welcome to this, the February 10 meeting of Livermore City Council. I call the meeting to order. Roll call, please. Council member, Barry Antos. Right. Council member Dunbar. Here. Council member Wong. Here. Vice Mayor Branning. Here. Mayor Marchand. Here. To join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to reorder the agenda. We're going to move 4, which is the open forum to, after 7.1, and they will now move on to the consent calendar. Do we have any public comments for consent? Yes, mayor. We do. The first speaker is David McQuiggan. Johnny the ****** martial arts. Excuse me. Excuse me. You or miss David Nougogin, you have to speak to the minutes. You are not speaking to the minutes. You are forfeiting your time. You can be going back back to the end. I gave you I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No. No. I'm sorry. You're done. You you are done. You have forfeited your time. We will move you to the end, and you can complete your comments. We will move you to the end. Next speaker, please. The next speaker is Greg Scott. Good evening. Greg Scott. I'm speaking on the water rates. The water rate for our household is we have a service fee of $37, I think, and 1 billing. Wait. Excuse me. We're speaking on 0.25 0.2. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Excuse me. On water rates. We and our our household, we pay. We have a service fee of $37 a month that's with consuming no water. A unit of water is about $4. The unit of water is a hundred cubic feet. That's about, 748 gallons. So we used in a billing cycle 1,500 gallons or less, and we paid $48 in there, $47. It's a lot of money for that kind of water. In a month, that would be about 50 gallons a day. That isn't that much water usage. I don't know how people are paying their water bills, but this is getting outrageous, especially if you do any kind of landscaping. But we really shouldn't be watering lawns. We're wasting water greatly. And, you know, we're gonna have to rethink water and water rates. What's come out especially by president Trump and and the shipping. We ship 5,000,000 acre feet water south to Southern California in this in this water deal too. You know, it's a gallon of almond for mister Resnick and the Resnick family. You know, it's it's the people on fixed incomes and people on lower incomes, this isn't fair. The whole water thing isn't fair. For the public, you know, 5,000,000 acre feet is about 12 something trillion gallons of water. We're supposed to ship even more, and then president Trump comes out about the Delta smelt, smelt. You know, in the in the recovery program for Delta smelt in the last sampling period, they didn't find any of that fish. We're collapsing the delta. So we have to rethink our water, our water rates, and thank you. Mayor, that was the last speaker. Would you like to invite mister McWiggan back in? If you can if you can stay on the topic, perhaps. Otherwise, he'll forward for this time again. You will speak to the minutes. I will, Johnny the Repus Marchant. Okay. Thank you very much. That is your salutation. Thank you very much. You are done. That's your salutation. Please really keep both of them. No. We are moving on to the next. Agenda to be We are moving on to the next item. We're moving on to the consent. Person is going to be placed at the end. You will relinquish the podium. Act targeting a specific individual that is contrary to your stated policies. I do do believe mister Ocala will tell you that you are not an optimum position for minimizing your legal exposure by doing that. But you're deliberately good to act Cut the mic. Part of the official record. Thank you, Johnny, the ring to start. This. We are done. Next speaker. That concludes public comment for the consent. Consent calendar. Okay. Do we have anyone that wishes to pull an item for consent? Okay. Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion. I'll move consent. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Motion made by Vice Mayor, Branning, seconded by, Councilman Dunbar. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Attentions? Pass unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to 6.1. This is a public hearing on renewable energy. This is an ADA community energy contract. Honorable mayor Marchand and members of the city council. This is your city manager, Mariana Monishma. And item 6.1 is going to be presented by the city's sustainability program manager, Tricia Mento. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. The item before you tonight is consideration of a 25 year power purchase agreement with Ava Community Energy. The project involves installing solar and battery storage system at 5 city facilities. That includes city hall, civic center meeting hall, maintenance service center, the police department, and the water reclamation plant. The systems will provide several benefits to the city, including improving energy resilience by providing back backup power during emergencies consistent with our climate action plan and emergency operations goals. We'll reduce energy cost by allowing us to use energy from the batteries during times when grid electricity is more expensive. It lowers our reliance on diesel generators, and several of the sites will also include solar carports that provide additional shade in our parking lots. There will be approximately 36 spaces at City Hall, 20 spaces at the police department, and 4 at the Civic Center Meeting Hall that will be covered with solar canopies. The financial terms outlined in the contract include no upfront capital cost to the city. Ava Community Energy has selected 2 companies, Greenbridge and Gridscape, as a project financer and developer, and this team will install, own, operate, and maintain the systems. The city will make monthly payments to AVA for the electricity generated by the the panels and a flat rate for the storage capacity, and these payments will be less than what the city would otherwise pay for grid electricity without the project. And a crucial crucial reason we're able to achieve these savings is because we've been able to grandfather the facilities under the state's previous net energy metering laws, which provide higher compensation rates for excess solar energy that is sold back to the grid. And we're able to maintain the status if we have assistance install installed by about April of 20 26. And despite that being over a year away, there are some concerns from the project development partners about supply chains and the potential for tariffs to negatively impact product pricing. But if approved tonight, the city manager will have authorization to approve the final agreement providing the project pricing and feasibility issues are resolved and the agreement remains in substantially the same form as the item being reviewed by council this evening. Staff is recommending that the city council adopt 2 resolutions tonight. The first is finding that the project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, and the second is authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement in substantially the same form as the 1 included in the agenda tonight and determining that doing so is in the best interest for the city. So that concludes staff's presentation, and we're available for questions. We also have JP Ross from Ava Community Energy here tonight who will help answer questions as well. Okay. Any questions from the council? Do we have any public comment? On it? Okay. We're gonna take, just public comments first. If there's a question Oh. We'll take public comment first. Okay. And then we'll bring it back to the council. Yes, sir. We do. We have 3 speakers. David McWiggen, followed by Greg Scott, followed by Trish Monroe. Are you gonna behave yourself or you have to shut the mic off again? If you are going to personally insult me and and threaten me, mister Marchand, that will not go well. Now lehi me go to my comments. Several of them. Dollars 2,100,000.0 over 25 years. That's it? You spend, what, dollars 1,600,000.0 a year right now? You're going to be getting it at 20¢ instead of 40¢. You only get 5% of the savings over the 40 year over the 25 year lifetime. There was a question on the storage units. It says 6 50 kilowatts, but batteries are typically kilowatt hours. So kind of questioning that. If you're getting 6 90 kilowatt hours, well, that's 9 Tesla batteries or maybe 150 k, and you're paying 83 k a year to have that storage. The storage guarantee at 90% is measured by taking the number of hours in a month, subtracting the number of hours where the power isn't being supplied by the batteries when it's needed, and divide it by the hours in the month. As long as that over 90%, you get to be paying for the storage capacity. Although, that also means they can be up for 3 days straight and still meet the 90% threshold. And then you're gonna go rush this through on a sole source category. I found this chart on the Bay Area Reddit. And some of the local utility districts that have been created, Palo Alto, 17 Cents 17.5¢ a kilowatt hour. Pacific Power, 16.2 kilowatts cents per kilowatt hour. Silicon Valley, 14 Point 3. SMUD, 12 Point 6. Liberty Utility, IIID. PG And E is at 40%. So 40¢. So, yeah, you need to do something about PG and E. But somewhere along the line, somebody's making a lot of money, and it ain't the people in Livermore saving it. Thank you, Johnny, the racist marshall. The next speaker is Greg Scott followed by Trish Monroe. Good evening, Greg Scott. I wanna be clear on 1 thing about the renewable energy. It isn't a replacement for fossil fuel energy. It's in addition. We're consuming more and more energy, and it's just an additional source. It's not a replacement. So we're not solving a problem because we're not conserving energy, and we're consuming evermore. We've gone down an expanded consumption with a couple of things....

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lanetary environment. The goal is to address inequities in energy access and prioritize the health of people and the environment. And now, therefore, it be resolved by the city council of the city of Emeryville that 04/22/2025 is hereby proclaimed as Earth Day in the city of Emeryville, and all residents, businesses, and institutions are urged to advocate for policy changes, adopt renewable energy solutions, and work towards a cleaner and more sustainable future for our planet as proclaimed by the mayor of the city council of the city of Emeryville at a regular meeting held Tuesday, 04/15/2025. We now have item 4.2, a presentation from the police department for the annual report. Chief Jennings. Alrighty. Good evening, vice mayor Carr, mayor Moore, and our former first mayor, Courtney Welch. So this is gonna be a brief, overview of our annual report. Normally, luckily, I have the 3 people who've been on my public safety committee who've seen this or a version of this before. Car just saw it a couple months ago. So, you know, what it normally looks like, but it's also for, community members who did not have an opportunity to see it. They can see it through on, the webpage or the large gallery we have here today. So, with that, you see our annual picture we got right here behind us. You see a very eclectic, happy group. Next slide. Basically, my message, and my message is always the same. I appreciate the fact that I have a council that has given us the tools and the support to do what we've done, and I definitely appreciate my officers who have gotten the job done, bringing more trust in, community engagement, with the city. So I can't I can't do it without the officers that we have. Next slide. This is my former command staff. Everyone here is gone besides acting Lieutenant Dauer and PSM, Buze, but they'll both be leaving shortly also, so that that'll be different next year. Next slide. You'll see my my main sergeants here. 3 of these people will be gone, in the next future. And, special thanks to Sergeant Pablo Roxas, who actually put the PowerPoint together and is our community engagement liaison, and also my, recruiting and training officer, which is critical to the growth of our organization. Next slide, please. Again, about staffing. You see some pictures, lovely folks, that we just hired. 1 of the highest, honors to bring new people into their organization. It's important to hire good folks. That's the beginning of having a good organization. At 1.1 glorious moment, we were totally staffed in October, but that has changed, with attrition and injuries and some people moved on. So you see the numbers right there. And at any point in time, feel free to ask me any questions. We can engage in this. We're gonna keep it going. But again, you've seen this before. Next slide, please. Another thing that I'm proud of in our organization is the demographics. You see, we're a very, diverse organization, by our numbers and by the photos that you saw. We definitely represent the community that we serve. 1 of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that I've made it intentional to hire, great qualified female officers. The national average for female officers is less than 10%. We're up to 19% and, we're on our way to get to 30%. That's the national 30 on 30, initiative that's been put on by the National Chiefs of Police. And, I'm informally a part of that. I'm going to, I'm going to get there. So we're going to get there. Next slide, please. Again, our female, statistics, demographics are sworn. Again, seem very diverse. Nice. Next slide, please. Again, so what we hear about, our primary focus is to thwart crime, drive down crime, driving down the fear of crime. We've done an excellent job of doing that, and this is a for how you wanna get into it, a very layered, nuanced way of driving down crime that, with me and my 34 years of experience and my officers with a lot of experience have focused on with a with a vision of making sure that we're integrated with the growth of the city and also the, the feeling of, togetherness in the city. So most of our crime is property crime. 85% of our crime is property crime. We have a rich, diverse, commercial, area. We have a lot of apartment complexes and most of our crimes are petty theft, based on opportunity to commit those thefts. Next slide, please. Or violent crime. Any crime of violence is also, you know, is a threat to our society, the fabric of our society. But our crime rate, again, is low, especially compared to our regional partners. 1 of the things also I pride myself on is I did a, longitudinal study of our crime from 2010 till now, where you'll see across the region that most people most agencies' crime is down 15% to 20%, if not higher. But a lot of those crimes are, are down from, a high point that they've had. We've never reached our high point in the last, 15 years. Our higher point of crime was 2019, and we've never gotten to that number back yet. So I'm pretty pleased with that number. The numbers went up during, went down during COVID, and then they shot up exponentially, 21, 22, 23. And we're seeing, we've, ours was going up, but we've kept it below that high point number, which is really pleasing for us. Next slide. Again, showing that a crime is down 20%. The number is up to right now. We're down another 10 to 15% on most crimes compared to last year. So, again, this is due to several factors in my opinion, 1 being a change in, public policy, that's going across our region. Another is the fact that we've gotten the flock camera system. Another factor is that we had a significant increase in our staffing. So instead of running overtime to run the day to day operations of the police department, we're using the overtime to thwart crime by using some of the graph, the grant money that you'll see there on that we've used to put those strategically in areas that were crime was occurring to actually drive down crime further. So multi layered and everyone buying in on my vision And, the new hires are very enthused. Next slide, please. Again, breaking down the crime numbers. Again, petty theft being the highest. Our our, our crimes of violence are being the lowest, which is great. But, you know, any crime. We're trying to get to a utopia where there is no scribe, and you don't need police officers. And then our breakdown by demographics, and their rest. Next slide. Our juvenile rest remain consistently low. We consistently return juveniles to their homes, 79, 80 percent. The 1 the juveniles that end up going to juvenile hall usually have a warrant for the arrest for some other, reason. Possession of a firearm is automatic, take to juvenile hall. Usually, the robberies are depending how the robbery was committed. Was it force or fear? Was there actual violence used? They they automatically go to juvenile hall. So those numbers remain low, which is good for us at the win. Next slide, please. To me, this is important. And it really would be more important for the members who have not been on the, public safety committee. But this really explains how our use of force is used. Try to give an explanation. So if if you were to arrest me and then, Mayor Moore put me in a twist lock and Vice Mayor Moore put me in another twist lock is 1 victim or 1 suspect, but 2 incidents. So the numbers can be skewed in that sense, but every use of force is counted in our, in our matrix, and you can see less than 0.4% of our, our calls for service involve force, which is different from what you see in the news, it's different from what you see, what you read in the paper. But that's how, California counts our, our incidents of uses of force. Vast majority of our, contacts are traffic and a lot of talking. Next slide, please. Usually, we use the forces that will come complaints. Those are definitions of our dispositions of uses of, complaints. Not really nuanced. Either you, you know, we have very you'll see the next we'll just go to the next slide. Unless you have any questions. So you'll see our numbers. Very part of our trans our transparency portal. All this is on our web page. You can find all this information. It's on there. You'll see that most of our sustainer for policy violations. And, essentially, every day, there's somebody who's doing a policy violation. It could be as as minor as not having your, your correct uniform on. So there's policy violations day to day. But every time that we do a, internal affairs complaint, we look at it from top to bottom. If we find policy violations, you see those are sustained, but you don't see any sustained for any, force, violence, rudeness. Well, there's some rudeness in the sustained policy violation. But the ones that really get us in trouble of, the ones we don't like, the mistake of the mind, where or the specific mistake of the heart. Whereas the heart where you're you're you're malicy by malice committing, you know, hurting someone, believing in someone, we don't have that in our organization. And those are born out in our internal affairs investigations, which are, which are low. Next slide. 1 of the reasons why I think that our crimes are down again, nuanced approach is the flock cameras. Thank you, council for approving that. Some of the numbers that come with that, 2,000,000 license plates are scanned monthly. Same license plate can run through the town 16 time. You count 16, 16 other times. But you'll see some of the things. And these are numbers are just from, October when the cameras were fully off automated to December. So this is a short, snapshot of how the cameras have affected us. But the most important number to me, besides the ones we've arrested, is the 3 96 to 1 vehicles alerted and the 20 felony vehicles alerted. When officers are alerted, they see it. They go. They drive the car out of town. That anecdotally would be the reason why crime could be done also. So there's several things that go involved with, fighting crime. This is a very good tool. City, manager Bellos just had me talk to our state senator regarding giving another federal grant, to maybe possibly or asking for, the rest of the cameras, to be paid for through a grant. So we'll see how that that goes. So, I talked to Luca for quite a bit. I sent her our our staff report. So we'll see what comes out of that. Next, slide, please. My staff, again, my my beautiful communication staff with part of my, parking enforcement staff, you see the amount of calls. A lot of calls for service. I'm very pleased that our 911 answers are 20 seconds or less, which is, integral to people feeling like they're gonna be served when they call us. We're a full full service organization. We have a we respond. And, I can't say that for for everybody. You see the amount of calls for service that we have, significant amount of calls, 38,000, and the amount of reports are generated, 4,000. Next slide. 1 person doing this property and evidence booking, almost 2,000 items booked in a year, over 2,000 other items purged. That's done with the group on overtime and 500,000,000 pounds of drugs purged. That's done by 1 person's, 1 person, Adrian Robinson, and she's also the 1 that does all the stats that you see. So I I know the public safety committee under understands that. Everyone's listening on the watching the television. 1 wonderful person does all that work. Next slide, please. Another 1 person does our records. With a little help from our, my, my public safety manager, Duchess Bouzet. So again, a lot of calls for requests. These things are not easy to do, redacting, finding them, mailing reports out, and sending subpoenas. So that was simply done by 1 or 2 people in my organization. Next slide, please. And she's also my chaplain. So a lot of people doing multiple things. Traffic enforcement. So this is 1 of the things that caused me concern last year when I saw the amount of traffic actions that we had. Back in the day, well, before any of us, there used to be 4 traffic enforcement officers. We're down to 1, Steve Hindergard. Everyone's responsible for doing traffic. Every officer is supposed to be doing some, but that number had significantly dropped after COVID. It was like hands off. So I, reenergized the folks into doing these things because we wanna drive down, injury accidents, accidents where people really get, who die. And also, it's proven that when you're having, proactive enforcement, that it drives down crime in your town. So you see that there's a 27 increase in traffic stops, 70% increase in moving violations. My emphasis to answer some of the, qualitative issues regarding our stops is to make sure you're moving doing moving violations opposed to mechanical violations. So we're looking at things that are gonna cause accidents, which is easier for me to defend if something goes wrong in doing that traffic stop. I'm not caring about expired, registration or your cracked windshield and this is so egregious that you're gonna imminently wreck. But I want you to do running red lights, running stop signs, you know, merging crazy. So those are why you see the 70% increase. We made an emphasis on that. Parking citations up 9%, which is amazing because those doom buggies that we have have been broken on and off. So they really again, the officers are doing some more park parking citations. So that's a significant, revenue maker. And also, it keeps the flow of traffic in our our commerce areas moving. And so that was a 9% increase. And that 1, Mike, is gone. It's only only 1 parking enforcement officer right now. So that's another vacancy that we're we're working to fix, because they pay for themselves. Next slide, please. Again, more of the traffic collision numbers. Next slide. 1 of the things that, again, I'm I'm pleased with that, you know, I had officers buy into doing these grants. There was no way that the command staff could do this on their own....

Dublin City Council Regular Meeting April 1, 2025

Tom Wong April 29, 2025 0

Dublin City Council Regular Meeting April 15, 2025

Tom Wong April 29, 2025 0

Call to order Pledge of Allegiance Presentations and proclamations Public comment Consent calendar Public Hearing Unfinished Business New Business City...

Berkeley Special City Council Meeting – April 22, 2025

Tom Wong April 28, 2025 0

It is 6.04. And we're gonna get this show on the road. Are we ready? Just about. Let's make sure...

Orchard Avenue Calming Project

Tom Wong April 17, 2025 0

The Orchard Avenue traffic calming pilot project is designed to enhance safety for all road users by reducing speeds and discouraging cut through traffic. Key features include a travel lane reduction in each direction, lowering speeds and eliminating aggressive passing, flexible delineators and bollards allowing for future adjustments, mini speed humps and refreshed striping at the Joyce Street roundabout to slow vehicles down. This cost effective pilot project was implemented quickly without asphalt or concrete work, keeping Orchard Avenue adaptable for future permanent improvements. A safer, calmer Orchard Avenue built for the community.

Hayward Planning Commission Meeting April 10, 2025

Tom Wong April 17, 2025 0

Transcript I think we're waiting for Nick. We're good to go. Recording in progress. Good evening, and welcome to the City of Hayward Planning Commission meeting for 04/10/2025. We We are holding a hybrid meeting with some participants in the council chambers and others who have joined virtually via Zoom. This meeting is being webcast on Comcast TV channel 15 and live streamed on the city's YouTube channel and on the city website. Per Assembly Bill 2 4 4 9 and pursuant to government code section 5 4 9 5 3, the meeting will include a teleconference location at Starbucks located at Box located at 400 East Ocean Avenue in Lompoc, California. Planning Commissioner member Goodbody will participate via teleconference. The agenda has been posted at the teleconference location, and the public will have an opportunity to address the planning commission. This meeting is called to order at 07:02PM. Can we please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? Miss Allen, would you please call roll? Good evening. Commissioner Franco Closson, absent. Commissioner Goodbody? Present. Commissioner Hammond? Present. Commissioner Lowe? Here. Commissioner Myers? Present. Chair Hardy? Present. So we will now open public comments on any non agenda items. The public comments section provides an opportunity to address the planning commission on items not listed on the agenda. The commission welcomes comments and requests that speakers present their remarks in a respectful manner within established time limits and focused on issues which directly affect the city or within this jurisdiction of the city. As the commission is prohibited by state law from discussing items not listed on the agenda, your item will be taken into consideration and may be referred to staff for further action. Speakers shall not use threatening, profane, or abusive language, which disrupts, disturbs, or other wise impedes the orderly conduct of a commission meeting. The city is committed to maintaining a workplace free of unlawful harassment and is mindful that city staff regularly attends commission meetings. There are no public commenters. Commissioner, There are no public commenters. Commissioner Goodbody, are there any members of the public who wish to make a comment at your location? There are none here. Thank you. I will now close public comments. So item number 1 tonight is an action item. For this item, the planning commission may make a recommendation to city council. Item 1 p h 2 5 0 1 5 is a public hearing for the recommended fiscal year 20 26 through fiscal year 20 35 capital improvement program. Does staff have a presentation for this item? Thank you, and good evening, madam chair and commissioners. I'm Alex Amiri, public works director for the city. Staff is pleased to be here this evening to present the city's FY26, FY35 '10 year capital improvement program. The development of the CIP has been a process involving many staff from various departments over the past several months. Public works and utilities team have been managed by senior management analyst, Ellie Lowe, and the process has been led by management analyst, Michael Wolney. As always, engineers, planners, and other staff in various divisions and departments have been involved and contributed to the process. Staff recommends that the commission finds that FY '20 '6 '30 '5 CIP is consistent with the city's 02/1940 general plan and recommend its approval to council. I now turn this over to Michael Worny to kick off the staff presentation. By the way, Michael is at City Hall, but stayed stayed in his office to make use of his multi screen, setup. Thank you. Michael? Good evening, everyone. Can everyone hear me and see the presentation? Yes. We can hear you. Great. And, do you see the presentation? Okay. Perfect. Yes. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, planning commission, members of the public, and city staff. My name is Michael Wolle, and I am the management analyst in the public works department. This is the fiscal year 2026 to 02/1935 recommended capital improvement program presentation on how projects within the CIP are consistent with the 02/1940 general plan. Just for reference, the photo that you see here in the background is the completed phase 1 of the STAC Center, which I'll mention again in some later slides. This is the fifth year that the CIP has been developed in the online OpenGov stories format. OpenGov stories is an online budget book development tool designed to increase the user friendliness and ease of navigation within a complex budget. It's also intended to help increase the depth with which community members, council members, and other stakeholders can explore a budget. I will now open up the online book to provide a quick tutorial on how to navigate it. 1 moment while I switch screens. Okay. Can everyone see the CIP web page on the city's website? Yes. Perfect. Okay. Scrolling down on the CIP web page, the public will see a blue bar, which will take the user to the online version of the CIP. This is the recommended viewing experience for the CIP because it includes a number of interactive tables and charts. If the public would like to view a printable version of the CIP, they can click the second blue bar here to view the entire CIP document in PDF format. There's also a section on the website which includes the fiscal year 20 25 CIP semi annual progress report where users can view status of current projects. Now I'm going to scroll back up and click the first link to take you to the OpenGov platform. Here, you'll see the home page. If you scroll down, you'll see 4 main sections of the CIP. First, the introduction introduction section includes more information about the city's elected officials and and organizational chart. Second, the strategic priorities includes an overview of the city's strategic priorities and some featured projects that support these priorities. Third, the explore the budget section is the heart of the CIP, where the public can get key budget insights, such as the total proposed budget amounts, as well as information on various projects within the CIP. Lastly, the table of contents page will allow users to navigate within the CIP, which I'll go over later. First, let's look at explore the budget. As you can see, this page summarizes the fiscal year 26 budget at a high level. The recommended fiscal year 26 budget is a hundred and $61,000,000 and the total 10 year budget is at 1,300,000,000.0. Below that section are other key insights such as the total fiscal year 26 general fund transfers to CIP funds, which amount to approximately $3,000,000. The total fiscal year 26 internal service fees are approximately $3,900,000. And the total identified but unfunded capital needs portion is approximately 709,000,000. If the public would like to see further details on the projects that comprise these 3 amounts, they can click the links to the right side that say click here to learn more. Scrolling down, the user can choose either to view the CIP by fund or by category. I'll start by clicking the fund link. Here, the public can see an overview of the city's fund portfolio. If they click down into the table into the, carrots on the left, the public can view the total recommended budget amounts for specific funds. If the user, keeps scrolling down the page, they'll see a description of each fund and every underlying text is a link to a new page that will show the various projects within each fund. For example, if I click on the fund 2 10 gas tax fund, I'll be taken to a separate page dedicated to fund 2 10 projects. As you can see, I can click on each caret, and, it will show a short list of featured projects with each having their own project number and project page. If I scroll down, beneath the table, there's also a short list of featured projects that have their own page. For example, if I click on the fiscal year 26 pavement rehabilitation project, I will see an image and description of the project along with an overview of revenue sources that contribute to this project, as well as the expense budget for this project. Now I'm gonna go back to the explore the budget, category page. And once again, the public, if I click on the total budget by category this time, the public will, again, will see a pie chart with the fiscal year 26 total budget, but this time broken down by category. Just like the fun page, the public will see a type table that populates a pie chart and allows the user to see the projects within their total budgets or organized by category. If the user continues down the page, they will also see the page's, links for each category. For example, if I click on the livable neighborhoods link, I'll see a description of what the category is and then another table and the projects and budgets that are in this category. Similar to viewing by fund, the bottom of this page will also show all of the featured projects within this category. In this case, parks and buildings, traffic calming, pedestrian and bicycle improvements, etcetera. Now, I'm going to go back to the Explore the Budget page 1 more time. And I would like to point out 2 helpful resources. First, starting with Appendices. If the public is looking for a specific project budget, but aren't sure of how to find this budget, or excuse me, how to find this project, the user can click Appendix A for all project budgets by category. The Appendix A page will show an extended view of every project and its budget. The public can search for keywords using the control or command f function. For example, if I wanted to search for pavement, I can click control f, type in pavement, and then find all projects with the word pavement in the project title. On the other hand, if the user is looking for a specific project description and aren't sure where to start, the best source would be Appendix B. So going back to the Explore page, I'm going to click Appendix B. On this page, the search functionality is actually built within the table. Again, if we wanted to search for pavement related projects, I can type in pavement into the project title search bar, click Okay, and this table will bring up all projects with the word pavement in the title. The easiest way to reset your search is to refresh your browser, like so. If you are ever lost or want to start over, the bottom of every page should have a table of contacts link. When the public opens the table of contents, the user will see an overview of the structure of the CIP to links to every single page in the CIP. This is the best way to navigate to a particular section or page quickly. The 3 main sections featured on the homepage are also here: the Introduction, Strategic Priorities, and Explore the Budget. The other 2 subsections of the CIP, by Fund or by Project Category, are also here. This allows the user to view project budgets and descriptions by fund or category, like we just went over. The last section, for other, shows the appendices as well as the CIP PDF link. The semi annual report for fiscal year 26 will be linked later this year as projects make progress. That concludes our tour of the online CIP book. I will now return to the presentation. 1 moment while I switch screens. Okay. And just 1 more check. You can see the PowerPoint presentation? Yes. We can see it. Great. Thank you so much for confirming. Okay. So this slide provides a snapshot of the recommended CIP's budget breakdown by project category. As you can see here, the largest portion of the recommended fiscal year 26 budget has been programmed in the sewer system category in orange. This category comp, encompasses a wide range of projects which support the ongoing replacement and improvement of our utility infrastructure. Projects include our annual sewer line replacement and our phase 2 improvement project at the water resource recovery facility. The second largest category is the livable neighborhoods category in gray, which includes projects like La Vista Park, the South Hayward Youth and Family Center, median landscaping projects, traffic calming projects, pedestrian and bicycle improvements, and sidewalk projects, among others. The amounts shown are the forecasted expenses that are planned for fiscal year 26. This slide slide shows a snapshot of a recommended budget broken down by fund as opposed to category. As you can see here, funds with the largest allocation of the recommended budget are the water and sewer system funds in blue and orange. And the fund with the third largest budget allocation is fund 4 0 5 for capital projects. Many projects will, will fall within deliverable neighborhoods categories such as La Vista Park and the STAC Center, which I previously mentioned. The rest of this evening's presentation will focus on demonstrating the proposed CIP's consistency with the Hayward 2040 General Plan. For any members of the public who are unfamiliar with the General Plan, it's a comprehensive document that contains the goals, policies, and implementation programs intended to guide the future development of Hayward. The full, plan can be found at the link shown at the bottom of this slide. The plan's goals and policies are organized, into various elements, which are listed in the web page. The proposed fiscal year 26 CIP includes a number of projects which support these elements. I'll be going into further detail about some of these CIP projects on the following slides. The following slides will also have the goal or policy number on the '20, from the 02/1940 general plan at the top of each slide under their respective element. Projects related to this element, goal, or policy number will be showcased on each slide. The Public Facilities and Services element establishes goals and policies to guide the overall provision of Hayward public facilities and services in Hayward. The South Hayward Youth and Family Center, which is a community center located on the corner of Tennyson And Roos Road, is a prime example of a CIP project that supports this element. The new public safety center will also fit under this goal as well. 2 additional examples include the water resource recovery facility, switchgear rehabilitation, and phase 2 improvement projects, which are critical to ensuring the continued operation of future growth of our wastewater treatment facilities and services. The mobility element of the general plan serves to improve the mobility of people and goods throughout the city. The Mission, Mission Boulevard phase 3 project is a key example of a CIP project that supports this element. It's the last phase of the 3 phase Mission Boulevard corridor improvement project. And will include traffic calming measures the addition of bicycle facilities the installation of landscaping monument sites and other improvements some other examples include the Campus Drive improvement project through which a series of traffic calming measures have been implemented in the stretch of Campus Drive between Second Street and Hayward Boulevard. Finally, the Main Street Complete Street Project and Safe Routes to School implementation are examples of a major CIP project in alignment with this element. These projects will improve pedestrian and bicycle facilities along Main Street and near Hayward Schools to create safe and friendly environment for multimodal travel in Hayward. Several other mobility projects worth noting include the pavement rehabilitation and new sidewalk projects, which are completed every year and are intended to improve the city's pavement condition index, as well as expand the city's sidewalk network. Staff has also in has also an internal policy to allocate at least 10% of the overall paving budget to roads with a pavement condition index of less than 30. The table shows the city's historical PCI for the last 10 years. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 means newly paved road. The natural resources element establishes goals and policies to protect and enhance the natural resources within Hayward. Our recycled water project supports this element by combining or by providing treated wastewater to customers for irrigation purposes, which saves drinking water and reduces the volume of wastewater discharged to the bay. The city officially began delivering recycled water to approximately 31 phase 1 customers in March 2022. And will begin developing a phase 2 facilities plant to prepare for the expansion of the system. La Vista Park is another major project aligned with this element. The project is a 39 acre planned destination park located a quarter mile east of the intersection of Tennyson Road and Mission Boulevard in South Hayward. The the design phase of the project is complete and bids for construction are currently in process. Additional examples include the 1.4 megawatt solar project at the water resource recoveries facility, through which the city is expanding its solar field. Efforts to transition the city's fleet to hybrid and EV models is another example as well as the citywide EV charging projects. These 3 items also directly align with the city's climate action plan, which have been adopted as part of the general plan. The committee safety element serves to enhance the programs and services of the Hayward Police and Fire Department. The new Public Safety Center project aims to develop the conceptual design of the new facility, including site assessment of 2 potential locations: the former California Air National Guard site and the former City Hall building on Foothill Boulevard. The scope of the work encompasses identifying space needs, conducting site analysis, design, and creating facility layout plans, and cost analysis. The land use element establishes goals and policies to enhance Hayward's neighborhoods and districts with an attractive mix of uses and amenities. 1 of the main goals within this element is the goal to create attractive corridors that serve people traveling through the city. Median landscaping improvements and the new public art crosswalk project are examples that meet this goal....

2/6/25 – Library Commission Meeting

Tom Wong April 17, 2025 0

have the requirement for graduation. All of the PUSD schools do and possibly some of the private schools. We even use it for training as well. We put training videos online and we can yeah. Very extensive, awesome product that we like to use. I just have 1 question and might get into discussion. I'm just curious why the teen programs went so down. Like, it was 47 in 2022 and 23 in the in the data we got in the That's a great question. I think it came up we used this data for our prior presentation, and that same question came up. And I think it was how, and, Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong. I have some recollection, and we can get you a more definitive answer. There was a change in the how we measured the the age groups. So what the library does is we report information to the state every year. So they give us categories, and we are trying to track all our stats based on the categories for the state report. It just makes it a lot easier. So I think there was something to do with that and possibly that we didn't measure teens in in that period in the same way. Is that Or did you measure them in all programs? Grama that We could have done that. They could have been but we can get you a a a more accurate answer on that. 1 of your slides described interactive programs for youth as something people wanted. What does that mean exactly? So I would consider that a program I would consider that a story time program, but I would also consider it, like, our robotics and coding programs for kids, any art and craft program, anything that they're participating in instead of just sitting and listening is how I would Okay. Like, not passive, I'm assuming. Even in the library world, I guess you could a a passive program could still be interactive and participatory. Passive would be more of, on your own versus a staff led grama, generally. And 1 of your slides mentioned community partnerships. Do we have any community partnerships with the library? We do through our, Value Humane Society with Paws to Read. It would be 1 of the biggest ones I can think of. School district. School district. Yes. Yes. That could definitely be a community partnership. I think we often refer to it as a district partnership, but it's it is still a community partnership. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Are we exploring the report further than or is this our discussion area? Oh, we are. Yes. I think we were trying to segment, we have, actually some questions we'd love for you to consider. Okay. You don't need to respond to them all, but just, you know, kind of to kick off the discussion, but you're, of course, welcome to discuss anything of interest. So I'll pass it back to Jeff for that. Excellent. So we're ready, moving on to our discussion. Using the perspective of your connections in the community and your personal experience, we would like you to input on the following. Do the planned program areas reflect the needs of our community? Are there emerging trends or community interests we should consider for future programming? And finally, what additional information would help you support outreach? And again, I'm more than happy to slide back to different slides here as needed. I guess 1 of the questions, and I'm not sure, you might have included it in the teen programs, but I know that in the past year or so, we had, the finance. We we sort of had a couple of presentations for teens or workshops for teens that had to do have the requirement for graduation. All of the PUSD schools do and possibly some of the private schools. We even use it for training as well. We put training videos online and we can yeah. Very extensive, awesome product that we like to use. I just have 1 question and might get into discussion. I'm just curious why the teen programs went so down. Like, it was 47 in 2022 and 23 in the in the data we got in the That's a great question. I think it came up we used this data for our prior presentation, and that same question came up. And I think it was how, and, Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong. I have some recollection, and we can get you a more definitive answer. There was a change in the how we measured the the age groups. So what the library does is we report information to the state every year. So they give us categories, and we are trying to track all our stats based on the categories for the state report. It just makes it a lot easier. So I think there was something to do with that and possibly that we didn't measure teens in in that period in the same way. Is that Or did you measure them in all programs? Grama that We could have done that. They could have been but we can get you a a a more accurate answer on that. 1 of your slides described interactive programs for youth as something people wanted. What does that mean exactly? So I would consider that a program I would consider that a story time program, but I would also consider it, like, our robotics and coding programs for kids, any art and craft program, anything that they're participating in instead of just sitting and listening is how I would Okay. Like, not passive, I'm assuming. Even in the library world, I guess you could a a passive program could still be interactive and participatory. Passive would be more of, on your own versus a staff led grama, generally. And 1 of your slides mentioned community partnerships. Do we have any community partnerships with the library? We do through our, Value Humane Society with Paws to Read. It would be 1 of the biggest ones I can think of. School district. School district. Yes. Yes. That could definitely be a community partnership. I think we often refer to it as a district partnership, but it's it is still a community partnership. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Are we exploring the report further than or is this our discussion area? Oh, we are. Yes. I think we were trying to segment, we have, actually some questions we'd love for you to consider. Okay. You don't need to respond to them all, but just, you know, kind of to kick off the discussion, but you're, of course, welcome to discuss anything of interest. So I'll pass it back to Jeff for that. Excellent. So we're ready, moving on to our discussion. Using the perspective of your connections in the community and your personal experience, we would like you to input on the following. Do the planned program areas reflect the needs of our community? Are there emerging trends or community interests we should consider for future programming? And finally, what additional information would help you support outreach? And again, I'm more than happy to slide back to different slides here as needed. I guess 1 of the questions, and I'm not sure, you might have included it in the teen programs, but I know that in the past year or so, we had, the finance. We we sort of had a couple of presentations for teens or workshops for teens that had to do with budget and managing money and learning a little bit more. And I know that I I remember they were fairly popular. I mean, there's always been the the stock game, which is, you know, kind of interesting. It's certainly a learning opportunity, but it seems like there's a vast number of teens, a larger number of teens who could benefit from the the other, like, budget 1 0 1 workshop that I think that we did. And I I didn't I wasn't sure if that was still in here. I didn't see it called out. But it seems to me that increasingly, that's still an important factor. I mean, I hear more and more that that kids are coming out at coming out of college and just having absolutely no idea how to how to deal with their money. Yes. So, I know we have done programs in the past. We do also have digital resources. Our wife's financial ratings and reports has actually a lot of PDFs online that kind of talk about finance 1 0 1. But again, yeah, for a programming, perspective, yes, I think I think the future ultimate goal would be to to have those and to continue to have those. Yeah. Yeah. I think that having them as a group, I mean, it's it's great to have online resources, but we all have that. I mean, we all have that at home. But I think to have the the opportunity to have community among that age group is huge. And the fact that the ability to sort of see the fact that other people need to know the same thing. I mean, it's 1 thing if you're at home and you don't know and then you're kind of alone. But it's another thing if you're in a group, and you have some community and you all say, well, gee, I really don't know anything about this. You know, how can I get the help? I think there's a there's a hand holding element to that that's valuable. It's part of why we see so many teens in the library, like, after school and, you know, sharing about their homework and everything because it's community. So I I would encourage us to think about, you know, continuing to do that sort of, you know, that sort of, project. Is this the adulting? Was it, like, adulting? I think it was adulting 1 0 1. Yeah. I think it was something like that. Yes. We did have a, budget 1 0 1 type. I believe it may have even been an online, during it was sort of the Zoom era, but afterwards, we did the money out loud program. I wonder, could that be what you're thinking of? It was the guest speaker. The guest speaker. The office. Yeah. Ishmid actually was 1 of the panelists. She did great. I remember that you were involved in it. So Yeah. There was a lot of interest in that topic. Yeah. I I mean, I think it's good. I think parents actually would like their kids to learn it. And maybe at that point in their lives, the parents aren't the people that the kids are listening to. So it's kinda nice if there's another opportunity for that. Thank you. And I had 1 more thing. I may as well just go, and then I'm done. With regards to outreach, I was in I I was encouraged to see that we now have a listing of all the commissioners on the city website, although Ishmeet is missing. So so we need to we need to do that. But I also thought that when we send out, you know, the library newsletter that comes out, it might be worth occasionally, like, listing the commissioners and saying, hey. Do you know these people? These are people in your neighborhood. These are people I mean, I think when we sign up to be commissioners, 1 of the things that we sign up to be is public. I mean, that that we are a library commissioner. Not that we're giving out our personal information or anything, but but to say, do you know these people? You know, maybe these people are your friends. You could ask them about things that are going on at the library just so that our names are more out there, because I've talked to several of my neighbors who didn't know that I was a library commissioner. And, I mean, that's not a big deal or anything, but it's just sort of like they're like, oh, it's a surprise. Like, oh, you're a library commissioner. I have a question. But unless they know who we are, they they're not that conversation isn't gonna happen. So it's just a a thought that we might put that in the newsletter. Yeah. So we can definitely bring that forward. I think we have explored that. I think it would be done on a city level, you know, for consistency across commissions was sort of the feedback I got on that. I have some seen some cities do that with their commissions. And they've, you know, where they have I think Livermore's pushed out some bios. I know I have some colleagues now in Livermore, and I believe it is an opt in type situation where a commissioner who's gone through sort of a, you know, an academy, community academy, was profiled recently, profiled in a good way. Realized all that. And, really I thought it was really neat to see it. It was on social. And, you know, it talked about how they became a commissioner, you know, what their interest in supporting the community was, what their experience was. But my understanding, it was it was just it wasn't a consistent thing. It was just sort of a a, you know, a featured social post, that the commissioner had opted into. Yeah....

Hayward City Council Meeting April 15, 2025

Tom Wong April 15, 2025 0

I don't know why I bring this. I never look at it. Oh, I guess I need it for the Recording in progress. Progress. Good evening, everybody. Good evening, everybody. Wanna welcome and good evening to you too. I wanted to welcome everyone, to a special joint, meeting of the city council and Hayward redevelopment successor agency board. Today is 04/15/2025. I like to call a meeting to order. And if I could ask, council member Bonilla to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Absolutely. Please stand if you're able. Thank you. Madam city clerk, if you can please take the role. Yes. Thank you very much, mister mayor. Good evening. Council member Andrews? Present. Council member Bonilla junior? Present. Council member Goldstein? Present. Council member Roach? I understand she's running a few minutes late. Council member Syrup. Present. Council member Sir Menon. Present. Mayor Salinas. Present. Thank you. Moving on to we have a special presentation, this evening. This is annual National Public Safety Telecommunications Week. And, I know we have the police chief here. Do we have anyone else from the dispatch dispatcher? Dispatch is here. Thank you. Let's give our dispatcher a big round of applause, you know. Thank you. If I can have Councilmember Bonilla hold that up. And then, I'll read the proclamation and then we'll take a picture up here. And then, if you have a few a few words, you can always deliver those if you want. Okay. Proclamation. Whereas, emergencies that require police, fire, or emergency medical services can occur anytime. And whereas, when an emergency immediate response of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics is critical to the protection of life preservation life and preservation of property. And whereas the safety of our police officers and firefighters is dependent upon the quality and accuracy of information obtained from residents who telephone the 911 communication center. And whereas public safety telecommunicators are the first and most critical contacts our residents have with emergency services in times of distress. And whereas public safety telecommunicators provide information to and ensure the safety of our police officers and firefighters by monitoring their activities by radio. Whereas the members of the Hayward, where whereas the members of the Hayward 9 1 1 communication center have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fires, and treatment of patients. And whereas each dispatcher has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their jobs. And whereas the, whereas the city of Hayward, OSE, you debt a gratitude to the dedicated men and women of the Hayward Police Department 9 1 1 communication center who dedicate their lives to answering calls from residents experiencing intense personal crises and during community wide disasters and who serve as the main points of contact for those persons seeking relief during an emergency. Now, therefore, I, Mark Salinas, mayor of the city of Hayward, do hereby proclaim the week of April 13 to the nineteenth 20 25 as National Public Safety Communications Week. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give our dispatchers a great big round of applause. This is where we, we we break Instagram right here. Yep. It's gonna turn fire. There you go. You hold it. Okay. Oh, yeah. She's coming. Yeah. There you go. Perfect. Perfect Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. If you wanted, you can say a few words. Mister mayor, council, thank you very much. This is an honor to be here. I just wanna recognize our emergency dispatch center. We have the best of the best. 247, our team is on duty here to help the citizens of Hayward when they have an emergency or a bridal, And I'm very proud of our team and, the amazing work that they do every single day, and you should all be proud too. So thank you very much for this honor. Thank you. Also, I wanted to, I wanted to acknowledge, a special student today. Her name is Giselle, Sanchez, who is an intern for the city clerk's office, and she's from the rising leaders program. Where's where's Giselle at? Is she here? Thank you very much, mister mayor. She's actually on her way here. Oh, she's Because she can't find parking. So Oh, she's parking. Okay. Good. That's you. Alright. Well, she comes from the rising leaders program. And, when, when she comes into the room I'll do this whole whole bit all over again to make sure she hears it. But she's, you know, she's a young student who's, trying to, get her way into local government. And so, it's always good to see students, starting young and, early. So good. Save your applause. We'll applause her when she gets in. Okay. Let's see. Next is public comment. Next is public comment, and this is reserved for people who would like to make a comment on something on the agenda or not on the agenda. I do have 1, 2, 3, 4. I have 6 comment cards, and let me see if there's anybody online. Okay. I will start with lehi me start with online. Is it Ariana Castellanos? Hi. Is this the time to comment on the consent or anything on the agenda? If if it is something on the consent calendar, I will, ask for public comment on on the consent calendar when that comes. So if you wanna wait, you can wait. I'm hoping to comment on something on the work session agenda. Should I wait or Yes. To comment now? Yes. Why don't you wait and then I'll, I'll I'll call back and I'll be Okay. No worries. Thanks. Just checking. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. Next speaker is, Elizabeth Lisonbee. Welcome. Thank you. It's interesting being on this side. Good evening, mayor and council members and city manager Alvarez. I'm Elizabeth Blanton. As most of you know, I'm a senior planner here in the development services department. I wanted to come to public comment tonight to tell you that I've been with the city for almost 7 years now, and I've really enjoyed my time working here. A major reason for that is that I've always felt that the city has valued me not only for the services that I provide for our community, but also as a whole person with a life and responsibilities outside of my job. Specifically, this was demonstrated when following the COVID pandemic, when it was time for our temporary work, flexibility to end. The city progressively decided to establish a permanent hybrid work policy with options for remote work. In the development services department, where I work, many of us were able to benefit from this hybrid work schedule, and this has led to better work life balance. It's boosted our employee morale. And while still allowing us to fully cover our permit center, our general inquiry boxes, and our e permits portal, which is open 24 7. For me personally, I being able to work from home for part of the week has cut my commute time. I live in Richmond, so that's 10 plus hours a week if I was coming in every day, down to 4 to 6 depending on the week. It's also allowed me to use my lunch break to walk my dog or handle chores at home, things that would normally fall to a weekend activity. So then when I am here, I can be fully a weekend activity. So then when I am here, I can be fully rested, present, and able to serve our community. So as a as a result, I was disheartened to receive an email from the city manager yesterday directing all staff, to come back into the office full time. The decision was made without consulting staff. And from the email that was sent, it's unclear why this significant policy change is necessary, and moreover, why a 1 size fits all approach is appropriate. Hayward's decision to entirely eliminate remote work also goes beyond what many other Alameda County jurisdictions are doing and even what beyond what the state is requiring. So, doctor Alvarez, you've told us on numerous occasions that you are driven by data and that you welcome feedback and collaboration. Staff would be happy to provide you with data demonstrating our effectiveness in serving the community when working from home. We also would be happy to partner with you to identify areas where we could improve our service, and develop tailored strategies for doing so. But in order to do that, we need to be invited to the table. We all have a shared goal here to provide the Hayward community with the best service possible, and there's no reason why this needs to be at odds with the city allowing for work life balance for its employees. So thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. Thank you. And and I have to apologize if I'm looking down, it's because I'm I'm taking notes. So, please. Next speaker is, Rick Rivera. Good evening, Mayor, city council, city manager Alvarez. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here this evening. First, I wanted to make a quick announcement that, beginning on May 12, the Hayward operated paratransit program will be doing a soft launch for our wheelchair accessible vehicle, service as well as our companion ride service for people who need help getting to and from their home. This is a service funded entirely by Measure BD, which was approved by Alameda County voters in 2014. So I would like to thank all of you, as well as the entire Hayward community for making it possible, to provide this service to our older adults and people with disabilities. My name is Rick Rivera. I am a analyst with the community services division. I would also like to take a moment to address data. This is what I do. I'm an analyst. I I analyze. Despite the ongoing debate regarding the end of hybrid and remote work, there is remarkably little hard data. Our very little does not mean none. In issue 630 of the peer reviewed journal Nature, published on 06/12/2024, Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Robing Han of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and James Liang of Peking University published the results of a 6 month randomized control trial of 1,612 employees at a firm with a market cap of 20,000,000,000. Randomized controlled trials, as you know, are the gold standard, of experimentation and very rare in the social sciences. I would like to share these results with the council. The experimental group, which was provided a hybrid work schedule, experienced the following. A 33% reduction in overall attrition, a 40% reduction in attrition for non management employees. The non management employees were a sample size of 1,217, by the way. A 52% reduction in quit rates for employees with a 45 minute or longer commute each way, a 54% reduction in attrition for female employees. And while I do not have hard data on this, having been at city hall for nearly 6 years, I can say that that does represent a significant portion of those of us who are here working. The data showed no significant difference in productivity between the control group and the experimental group. The data found a statistically significant improvement in manager perception of hybrid work, for a largely negative prior perception, to the experiment. Now, I did find 1 benefit to, all, work in office. In a survey of 1,500 CEOs, 20 5 percent did say that they would be utilizing that to reduce their overall, personnel costs, by motivating attrition. Thank you very much for your time, and have a good evening. Thank you. Next speaker is, and forgive me if I mispronounce this. Is it Cal, Kowalski? That was fine, Mr. Mayor. I only see you walking in on a City Hall. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, and my colleagues, up on the Fourth Floor Of City Hall. I've worked as a planner for various cities for my entire career. It's 25 years now, and I've never had to stand before a council in this type of situation before. It's unfortunate, but I felt strongly, I feel strongly enough about it that I felt like I needed to say a few things tonight. As civil servants, it's our job to provide our customers with the information they're looking for, to answer their questions, and to get them on their way. That's the most important thing, not making sure there's a **** in every chair, in every cubicle at city hall, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. I don't disagree that city hall should be open 5 days a week to the public, and that every department should have representatives there to assist customers who do take the time to come in. That's how a good government agency is supposed to operate. But it's simply not necessary to have every single employee be at city hall every day. We've proven that over the last 5 years. Let each department come up with its own plan to make sure it has some people here every day....

Oakland City Head Start Advisory Board December 19, 2024

Tom Wong December 19, 2024 0

Transcript Hi. I've never Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. You can. It's it's good. It's good. Thank you. Yeah. Please. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the City of Oakland Head Start Advisory Board meeting. We're gonna go ahead and get started. The meeting is being, called to order on December 19, 2024 at 3:40, PM. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Really? I'll just speak loud. Kate Chopp will fix it. So what we'd like to ask is if, our translation support, International Connect I'm sorry, International Contact could, present the international contact, instructions for interpretation, with miss Lucia. Yes. Of course. Yes. Hello, everyone. This is Luciana from International Contact, your language host for today. We have Spanish and Cantonese interpreters for this meeting and interpretation channels have been created. 1 moment while we 1 moment while we provide instructions. So, Vanessa, can you go ahead? Yes. Okay. Now, Olive, can you provide instructions? Cantonese. Cantonese. Thank you. Alright. Alright. Now for English virtual participants, please go to the English channel. Go to the world icon in the lower part of your screen and select English or e n. If you are using a smartphone, click on the 3 dots and select English. This is very important if you want to hear the interpreted comments into English in the latter part of the meeting. Reminder for English speakers is to, please, speak slowly so interpreters can keep up with you. So please keep that in mind. Now, interpreters will be asked to come to the microphone to provide instructions there as well and after instructions are finished, we, the multilingual instructions will be concluded. So now Vanessa, Olive, please, go to the mic. Rita Ma from Zoom? Or do you want me to go up to the mic? Everyone can hear me. To the mic? E either either either place is fine, Vanessa. Okay. Okay. Thanks. So do you want me to repeat everything? Yes, please. Okay. Thank you. Olive, please. Thank you. Alright. So this concludes the multilingual instructions. Thank you. Thank you, international contact team. So I want to, at this moment, let the, members know that there will be 3 different opportunities to speak, in the meeting. 1 will be a call for public comment. You'll have 1 minute to ask a question or make a comment. The next will be during the meeting, where discussion might occur, comments can be made, questions asked before an agenda item is voted on. And then at the end of the meeting at, open forum, members of the public or members here in the room, can make, you know, make a statement or ask a question that is not on the agenda. Each opportunity will be about 1 minute. So at this moment, I'd like to call roll. Chair Molly Tafoya. Thank you. Chair vice chair Lisonbee Bondi. Excused. Member doctor Jave Ross. Here. Thank you. Member Kevin Bridal? Present. Thank you. And member doctor Mari Tomarath? Present. Thank you. Member doctor j j Watkins? Excused. Member me Christina Michaud? Here. Thank you. Member Julia Forte Bridal is So we do have quorum. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to ask, chair Tafoya if you have any announcements you'd like to make. Nope. Okay. Thank you. Then we can proceed with the business of the day. We do have call for public comment. Wanna make sure we do that. Are there any interest in making comments or asking questions here in the room? I see no hands raised, on on Zoom. So at this moment, no public comment. Great. Thank you. Thanks to everybody for joining. We have Quorum, and it's almost a holiday bridal. Home stretch. So thank you for being here. First up for agenda items, review and approval of today's agenda. Are there any additions or edits to this agenda? I do believe that there is an edit under the financial report, for the financial 23 sorry. The final 2324 reconciled report for children's initiative. Is that something that we wanted to, present in January? Okay. So that was the only, staff request. Great. I move to approve the revised, December 19th board meeting agenda. Can I get a second? Kevin, do I have a second? All those in favor, please say aye. Yes. Aye. Aye. Aye. Approved. Great. Review and approval of the board meeting minutes from November 21st. Just a reminder, you did not have to be in attendance to review and approve. So we have quorum to approve those. Are there any edits or comments on last month's board meeting? Just that you were missed. I'm sorry. That's all. Sick kiddo. It happens, as you know. Well, then I will not move. Don't let somebody else move to approve the board meeting minutes. I move to approve the November board meeting minutes. Christina. I second the approval of the November 21st minutes. All those in favor, say aye. Yes. Aye. Great. Thanks. And then review and approval of the special advisory board meeting minutes from November 14th. Any amendments, comments, edits? Thank you for your participation. Thank you to staff for convening that. I know that was extra, and we appreciate you. I'll move to approve the advisory the special advisory board meetings from November 14th. Can I get a second? Kevin Vermont, second. All those in favor? Yes. Aye. Aye. Great. Thanks. Next up. We're on to action items. Advisory board officer elections. And Divina, I think that's you. Do you wanna take this 1? So this agenda item is actually for you to decide, when you would like to do the officer elections. The parent policy council, voted to move their elections to January because they didn't have they had just about making quorum. And so what they chose to do at the meeting was to actually just review what the different officer positions are, look at who has been in them, and give an opportunity for those current officers to just speak to what those roles are. So we can either go into office elections now or you can, choose to follow that similar pattern that the policy council chose. But we need we need a vote either way about which way which way you wanna go. We do. So we are missing 2? We're missing 3. We're missing 3 folks. So how do how do folks feel about waiting until January if we have more of a robust quorum? Okay. And, do we feel like we need a review of the positions, or do we Do we have it in the packet, Tracy? Not in the packet there in the bylaws. Yeah. Though. I think the the positions we vote on are just the 2. It's just chair and vice chair. So, I don't know if folks feel like they need an updated overview. I I don't, but I've been here a minute. We can do it again in at the elections. Yeah. And there is room to add any other office positions that you'll see fit. Yeah. So if, for example, you wanted to add fiscal or anything else, you're welcome to do so as well. So I just put that out there for you all to consider for January as well. So then we'd just ask for a vote on that. I actually think it might be helpful to know for the January meeting if we've if this advisory board has had any other positions between besides chair and vice chair? I don't recall anything else....

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